Escape from the city by camping out in the great wide open of the Joshua Tree National Park....

In 1987, U2 did a little guerrilla music video shoot on top of the Republic Liquor Store at 7th and Main in Downtown Los Angeles. Only announced hours before the shoot on the radio, thousands and thousands of fans poured into what many considered a bad part of town prompting the LAPD to have a little freak out and try shut down the show before anything happened. Luckily, in the name of rock n'......

I’m writing this from bed, plan on returning to sleep when I’m done and will be too busy cleaning up the residue from my birthday celebration last night to post on dear ole LAist anytime soon, but...in my bleary, horizontal state, I felt moved to write while still basking in the glow of the Old Crow Medicine Show’s concert last night. It’s a miracle I made it at all, having hours before returned from......

Gram Parsons left us for a better place 23 years ago. If he were still alive, he would be coming up on celebrating his 59th birthday. Gram is often referred to as the worlds first Country/Rock Star. He has maintained an incredible cult following through the years - how could he not being one of the first to discover Emmylou Harris, he played shortly with the Birds and had the ultimate rock-star notch in......

Gram Rabbit Cultivation (Stinky) – They’ve got a unique sound (kind of like Calexico mixed with trip-hop) and they’re from Joshua Tree. This is their second release and they’re performing live at Tower Sunset on 4/20 at 6:00 PM and the Echo on 4/21. Listen to some tracks on MYSPACE. Languis Other Desert Cities EP (Pehr) – Highly recommended new release from an under-appreciated local band. If you haven’t seen or heard them since......

Lisa Teasley is a successful fiction writer living in Los Angeles. Her first book, "Glow in the Dark," won the 2002 Gold Pen Award for Best Short Story Collection and the 2002 Pacificus Literary Foundation Best Short Story Writer award for fiction. Bloomsbury USA published her first novel "Dive" in 2004. The novel is a romantic thriller set in Los Angeles and Alaska. Bloomsbury will publish her latest novel "Heat Signature" in 2006. Age......

There’s something about a long weekend—whether you take a day off of work or are mercifully granted a Monday holiday—that begs for a trip somewhere else. One of the greatest benefits of living in LA is that there are so many places to go to get away from it, and the best of them are right here in California. If you're inclined to stay close to home, you can spend the weekend in Long......